Puffins from Reykjavík are an hour on a boat, mid-May to mid-August, and worth it
Where the puffin boats from the Old Harbour actually go, when the birds are there, what you see from the deck, and which one-hour tour to book.
You don’t need to go to the Westman Islands or the Látrabjarg cliffs to see puffins. Two small islands in the bay off Reykjavík, Akurey and Lundey, hold nesting colonies through the summer, and the boats from the Old Harbour reach them in about 20 minutes. The whole trip is an hour. It’s one of the best-value things in the city and one of the easiest to fit around anything else.
When the birds are there
Puffins arrive at the islands in late April or early May to nest in burrows on the grassy tops, and leave again in the second half of August once the chicks have fledged. So the season is roughly mid-May to mid-August, and the operators run the boats only inside it. Late June and July are the peak: the most birds, the most activity, and the longest evenings. By the second week of August the colonies thin out fast. If you’re travelling in the last week of August, expect a cancelled tour or an empty island, and don’t build a plan around it.
Do not expect puffins in September. Anyone selling a September puffin trip from Reykjavík is selling you a boat ride.
What the boat actually does
The boat motors out of the harbour, past Harpa and the Grótta lighthouse, and idles close to the shore of Akurey or Lundey. It does not land; the islands are protected nesting sites. You watch from the deck as puffins fly in and out of their burrows, sit in rafts on the water, and flap past at eye level with beaks full of sand eels. Guides hand out binoculars. Expect to see hundreds of birds, plus eider ducks, arctic terns, fulmars and often a few seals on the rocks.
What you won’t get is the clifftop experience of sitting a metre from a bird. This is puffins from the water, at 20 to 50 metres. Bring a zoom if photos matter.
The boats are small and the sea is inside the bay, so it’s rarely rough. It’s still an open deck in an Icelandic summer: 12°C and a breeze. Wear the jacket.
Which tour
Elding’s Classic Puffin Watching (from €62, one hour) is the standard trip on a small boat and the one we’d book by default. Their Premium Puffin Watching (from €88, one hour) uses a faster RIB-style boat and gets you closer to the islands for longer; worth it if you care about photos, not otherwise. Reykjavik Sailors’ Puffin Express (from €57, one hour) is the same idea from the same harbour at a similar price. Honestly, the three are close enough that departure time should decide it.
If you want whales as well, Elding’s Whales and Puffins combo (from €144, six hours) runs both trips back to back with a break at the harbour between them. It’s cheaper than booking separately and the only reason not to is if six hours around boats is more than you want in one day.
Our honest take
Book the Classic Puffin Watching in June or July, pick the early evening departure when the light is low and the birds are coming home with food, and treat it as the one-hour filler between a day tour and dinner. It’s one of the few tours in Iceland where the wildlife is close to a sure thing inside the season.
Skip it in the last two weeks of August; the odds drop quickly and you’ll get more from a whale trip. And if puffins are the reason you came to Iceland, this is the appetiser. The Westman Islands and Látrabjarg are the meal.
